False Starts

Starting all over again and again and again.

A women’s team in Dunedin, October 1941.

If women played a game and no one recorded it happening, does it constitute a beginning? If this history remains in their heads, does it have no bearing on future plans?

For the last ten years, I’ve been on the hunt for the beginning of my sport in my community. I was motivated by seeing the stories of women I played alongside, disappear from collective club consciousness. I’ve been deeply curious about the twelve years of Wellington women’s club rugby that was played under our unions watch before I turned up in 2002. Even more interested to understand the rugby that was played here before sanctioning and all the stops and starts along the way.

I wanted to know where we had come from to understand where we have ended up.

An excerpt from the write up on the first recorded women’s game in New Zealand, played in 1888. You can read the whole article here.

When I tell folks that the first recorded game of women’s rugby in New Zealand was played back in 1888, 100 years before my birth, it surprises many. What’s telling is that the response is usually, ‘Why I didn’t know that?’ rather than question which will unlock more answers, ‘Why didn’t it continue?’.

That lack of curiosity of our game and it’s unique history is what infuriates me most when I hear folks say ‘It’s a good start’. This is the line trotted out most frequently to tone police the communities latest frustration. I’ve heard it five times already this year. Twice in relation to the head coach appointments of last year’s World Cup finalists. Once in the wake of the disappointment of Ireland’s Six Nations campaign. Once here in Wellington during discussions of the structure of my local club competition. And once more in relation to the lacklustre promotion of the WXV.

All of these starts mark the beginning of the commenters interest in the situation, rather than the beginning of the story.

So many conversations right now are about resources. What number we can name that will close the century head start the other half of the sport has had. What adaptation to delivery can be trialled to hurdle every societal inequity. What latest report can be commissioned to confirm what the community has long been telling anyone who will listen.

The one resource we seem determined not to tap is the one who answered all of these questions before they were even asked. By starting over (and over and over), we continually overlook those that did it before the potential for funding even entered the conversation. We don’t know our history so we are doomed to repeat it, learning absolutely nothing in the process.

Although absent from most of the top level conversations, these women are still here. Filling the gaps most folks haven’t yet acknowledged exist.

So where do you start, if you’re wanting to do better? How do you begin to make things right?

Humble yourself. Humble yourself and listen. Those voices would stop shouting if you would only listen. Open yourself up to the real conversation lying underneath the latest issue of the day. Ensure it is flowing freely both ways and define your version of success together.

Give us bread but give us roses. We don’t just want your resources, we want your respect. We want you to value the leaders we have chosen for and from ourselves. We want you to acknowledge their role in our past and facilitate their role in our future.

If you do all this, you will know that this is just your beginning and ours is a much longer story.

With you,

Alice